Firm Wins $20-Million U.S. Nuclear Waste Pact
Management Analysis Co. of San Diego has been awarded a three-year, $20-million contract by the federal Department of Energy to manage the analysis of a southeast Washington site as a possible repository for nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power reactors.
The Basalt Waste Isolation Project in Hanford, Wash., is one of three Western U.S. sites under consideration for a repository that is scheduled to begin receiving spent fuel rods in 1998. MAC will help the Energy Department arrive at an “objective characterization” of the site, MAC project manager Jimmie F. Dollard said.
“This is an emotional issue, politically. But if (the waste site) is done right, it’s immensely safe,” Dollard said.
The other two possible sites being studied for the nuclear waste dump are a miles-deep salt dome in Deaf Smith County, Texas, and a site near the underground nuclear test facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev. MAC’s responsibility, however, is to analyze only the Hanford site.
Currently, spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear power plants are stored in pools of water within the commercial nuclear power reactors. In 1982, Congress passed a law ordering that storage of the highly radioactive nuclear waste be transferred to permanent underground sites, authorizing the Energy Department to find suitable locations.
Initially, the government planned to build two nuclear waste repositories, with the other dump to be located in the eastern United States. But plans for the eastern site were shelved last year because of the drop-off in nuclear power plant construction and a corresponding decline in requirements for dump capacity, Energy Department spokesman Mike Talbot said.
The Hanford site under consideration was the site of a huge prehistoric lava flow that is now a basalt bed several miles thick. If Hanford is selected, nuclear waste will be deposited in underground shafts drilled through the rock, then sealed with concrete, Dollard said.
Founded in 1975, MAC is one of several San Diego companies that are offshoots of GA Technologies Inc., the Torrey Pines nuclear power contractor and researcher. MAC President Robert C. Traylor is a former GA nuclear engineer who previously helped design nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers for the U.S. Navy.
MAC now has 400 employees, half of whom work in San Diego. MAC revenue last fiscal year totaled $49 million. The company is entirely employee-owned, said Traylor, 51.
MAC specializes in helping companies in the energy business make strategic decisions. Eighty percent of the time, those decisions involve some facet of nuclear power generation, Traylor said.
“If the next roll of the dice could cost you cost you between $50 million or $100 million, and you need help making the roll or decision, then MAC should get involved,” Traylor said.
MAC has been brought in four times, for example, by power utilities to help them decide whether or not to continue with construction of nuclear power plants in the face of growing public opposition and cost overruns. In the two cases Traylor would discuss, he said MAC advised each utility to halt construction rather than risk greater losses by continuing with the project.
The two plants were the Black Fox Power Plant near Tulsa, Okla., owned by Public Service Co. of Oklahoma and the Tyrone Nuclear Station in Wisconsin, owned by Northern States Power Co. of Wisconsin.
MAC’s extensive experience in nuclear power management matters was a prime reason for its selection among five other firms to manage the Hanford site analysis even though it was not the low bidder, Energy Department operations officer Bill Kellogg said. He said he was a member of the evaluation committee that awarded the contract.
